Ashlee Vance travels from Stockholm to Luleå, discovering how the Swedes got so good at making the things the whole world loves. He asks himself: How could this tiny nation end up as perhaps Europe’s premiere technology power?
As usual we will guide you through the video:
- (at 0:00 in the video) The Treehotel in Härads, northern Sweden
- (0:54) Introduction: The Swedes are up to weird and wonderful things
- (2:18) Stockholm fosters tech addiction: Spotify, Skype, Minecraft and Candy Crush all got their start here; the Stockholm “Epicenter” (House of Innovation)
- (3:30) Robots by Furhat Robotics
- (7:00) Sweden’s rise as a tech power: broadband, subsidized PCs, and a nation of pirates
- (8:20) Interview with Daniel Ek, CEO and Founder of Spotify
- (10:10) The Jante Law and some of the rules of it
- (13:00) A night on the town
- (14:20) Luleå: the Facebook data centre
- (18:24) Cheap reliable power from hydroelectric dams (Vattenfall)
- (22:05) Conclusion: “The people here try harder than anyone else to find a balance between striving for a bright future while living in their means.”
Ashlee Vance’s conclusion is surprisingly similar to Rick Steves’ bottom line: “Travelling here, you meet a people who have struck that elusive balance between the productive life and the good life.”
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